To be honest, this thread is revealing itself as liberals being incapable of discussing an alternative gender theory. Virtually no one has even quoted or tried to contend with the OP so far: instead, they are trying to cancel me.

Even you are trying to entice the moderators to censor this thread and have explicated you would censor it if you had the power.

The term "natural" needs to be defined here

I just meant natural in the sense that it is something in accord with the substantial form of the being in question. I am thinking of natural law theory here, but in a simpler sense for the sake of the discussion. Technically one needs to evaluate the natures as ordered by God to do ethics properly.

At any rate, I think the question of "naturalness" in the first sense is a total non sequitur that several posters in this thread seem to be getting led off track by

Agreed. I clarified my terminology but they don’t seem to want to engage in good faith.

Surely they are "natural" in terms of being ubiquitous and present in brutes as well, and in all human societies, but that seems irrelevant to their goodness.

Yes, but it is not in human nature, per human substantial form, to have those vices and issues: those are caused from the disordering of the soul and body—in other words, through privation of the realization of their nature.

On the cultural issues you raised, I do fear there is a bit of mixed messaging here considering the degree to which heterosexual fornication, pornography, etc. has been not only normalized but even glorified in the broader culture, such that it is plastered in advertisements all over the surfaces of our cities and the media is saturated it (acquisitiveness, pleonexia, even more so, such that it is now a virtue of sorts). This is where the cultural presentation of the "natural law" starts to look outwardly incoherent and arbitrary, because the metaphysical grounding becomes submerged and we instead seem to have a sort of arbitrary, voluntarist pronouncement instead. The equivocation on "natural" doesn't help I suppose, nor do the voluntarist undertones of "law" in our current context. I would rebrand it "moral ecology," or "Logos ethics," or something personally.

I couldn’t agree more. The worse part to me is that even people on a philosophy forum are unwilling to engage in a discussion about gender theory: they are behaving uncharitably, disingenuously, combatively, and hatefully. They ignore my post and resort to baselessly associating me with Nazism, bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, etc.

Isn't that definitionally true of any designation for any mental illness?

That’s exactly what I told @hypericin and they said I am being a sophist.

As shocking as it apparently seems to you, there are men and women who have no urge whatsoever to fuck the opposite sex

It is not shocking at all: that is a privation of their nature (usually of no fault of their own). It’s called asexuality.

Does this mean that the preference for bland food flows in an Aristotelian sense from human nature, and therefore my eating habits are wrong, deviant, a kind of mental illness?

Assuming it were a part of the essence of a human to eat bland food, which it isn’t, then this would entail that you are, all else being equal, acting immorally by eating non-bland foods no different than how it is immoral to purposefully eat foods that you know your body can’t digest. It wouldn’t, however, mean that you have a mental illness; and I never suggested that analogously to transgenderism. Transgenderism is a mental illness because it is gender dysphoria: it is the condition where the mind cannot cope with the nature that the “body” has. It is a dissociation disorder that causes serious harm to the patient.

So having a human essence doesn’t mean you must display every typical human trait

Banno, why do you straw man me? You are obviously a very intelligent person; and I think you are being uncharitable in our discussions. I want us to have a productive and interesting conversation to uncover the truth about gender theory (whether you are right, I am right, neither of us, etc.).

I never said that a human in being necessarily exhibits every human trait. In fact, that’s contrary to Aristotelian thought!

Bob takes an essence-like structure (“male nature”) and treats those empirical tendencies as normative obligations.

The idea that what makes a thing what it is (viz., an essence) dictates how that kind of being should behave is a standard Aristotelian view and is essential to moral naturalism.

Bob also equates essence with a set of tendencies or traits.

An essence is not a set of tendencies nor traits. An essence is the whatness, the quiddity, which determines what it is to be this particular kind of thing; a form is an actualizing principle that provides a thing with its essence. The essential properties of a thing are grounded in the essence it has (which is instantiated in its form). The properties in essence are really distinct from them in esse.

I'm not an essentialist, and I tend to see notions of 'male' and 'female' as evolving and changing over time.

To find common ground, we would need to discuss nominalism vs. essence realism. This is the basis for the gender theory I gave.

What matters most is recognising that trans people are here to stay. We need to learn how to live with this reality, not suppress it or label it deviant, just as much of the world has come to accept homosexuality as part of the spectrum of normal human experience.

You can be loving and kind to people while also recognizing that they have an illness that, if you truly love them, you would make reasonable efforts to cure.

There is no real basis in sex is my point of view

If you believe this, then, yes, there would be no such thing as sexual degeneracy or degeneracy of any kind. There would be no such thing as a man, woman, human, dog, cat, etc. … there would be just labels we give things. We wouldn’t be able to have doctors because there is no human nature to study to determine what is healthy; there would be no female vs. male sports because there is not real difference between them; there would be no real shared nature between two chairs or two humans; etc.

Is a false dichotomy. On the basis of queer history -- the lived experience of peopled is recorded in their histories. It's not a personality archetype, and it's not ahistorical. It's rather a third thing.

It’s a history of individual expressions; which are personality types. You describing, by your own admission, a person that lacks a real nature which is expressing their own subjectivity through their queerness. That’s a history of a personality expressing its subjectivity.

love is not a perversion.

What is love under your view?

In liberal thought, love is totally different conceptually than in conservative thought. Love, traditionally, is to will the good of another for its own sake; and the good is relative to its nature. You don’t believe in real natures: so what is love?

I take it that you now accept that your account derives an ought from an is, which is progress, of a sort.

My friend, I never denied this. In fact, I explicitly stated I am a moral naturalist.

Take a look at my present thread

I will take a look when I have time; but, again, just citing a source isn’t an argument. You have to present something to the discussion yourself. Why do you think Hume’s Guillotine is a law of logic? That’s a super niche and widely unrecognized view (which doesn’t mean it is wrong, although I find it improbable).

Yes, the actual world is a possible world. No, existence in the actual world does not entail existence in every possible world.

I didn’t argue this. I argue that a necessary being, by definition, exists in all possible worlds; so it must exist in the real world. You denied this. Do you agree with me that if X is a necessary being then it exists in the real world because it must exist in all possible worlds and the real world is a possible world? If so, then it does follow that if X is a necessary being in a possible world then X exists in all possible worlds and therefore exists in the real world. That’s my point.

No. You just moved your goal post. You still want gender to be "an epistemic symbolism of society’s understanding of the ontological reality of sex and its tendencies", and so grounded in your "ontological reality" and not in social reality. You still want trousers to be like the three sides of a triangle, the "symbol of an ontological reality".

What contention are you giving to what I said? I converted the terms to your terms so we can avoid semantics for now: please give an account of what is wrong with the conceptual analysis I gave so we can further this discussion.

I agree.

There's a difference between how you're treating homosexuals and how we treat schizophrenics.

I didn’t say that they should be equivocated: it was an analogy meant to elucidate the fact that believing there is something bad (or even wrong) with the condition of transgenderism, homosexuality, etc. does not entail that one wants to persecute them for it or doing Nazi atrocities to them. People keep associated me unjustly and disingenuiously with Nazism for merely thinking that it would ideally be good to find a cure for these kinds of conditions analogous to finding a cure for schizophrenia.

I don't think a schizophrenic is "degenerate" for having schizophrenia.

Again, my friend, why do you all quote me out of context? It is like you all want to invent ways to cancel me since you cannot find a way to do it with my what I actually said in the OP or with my responses. I am here for a good-faith conversation to discover the truth about gender theory.

To be clear, I made one comment to a fellow that a part of the liberal agenda is to support (1) sexual degeneracy, (2) homosexuality, and (3) transgenderism. In that comment, I was not referring to 2 or 3 as sexually degenerate, but other acts, broadly speaking, like BDSM. I then clarified to someone that, in truth, I do think that the acts involved in 2 and 3 are sexually degenerate (although I understand that is a provocative term to use that I wouldn’t use when talking to a member of the LGBTQ+).

The condition is separate from the acts. Homosexuality as a sexual orientation is not a behavior; gender dysphoria is not a behavior. A person that engages in homosexual or transgender acts (like anal sex or sissification for example) are engaging in degenerate acts in the sense of “having lost the physical, mental, or moral qualities considered normal and desirable; showing evidence of decline”. Obviously, this is not an argument against gender theory; and has nothing directly to do with the OP.

You lose me at essence realism

This is the root of our disagreement. You are a nominalist, which has deeper issues. We can discuss those if you would like; but without the basis of essence realism the whole gender theory I gave is useless.

 And, really, if you're not going to be the one doing the act why do you care?

The OP is about gender theory and if it is true. You are making an ethical claim that “if it only harms the individuals consenting to it, then one should mind their own business”; but this isn’t a thread about the ethics of LGBTQ+ behavior: it is a discussion about an aristotelian alternative to modern gender theory.

To answer your question, your ethical claim here presupposes a flawed understanding of harm, rightness, wrongness, badness, and goodness. In fact, I do not know how you can be a moral realist, truly, if you don’t accept moral naturalism. @Banno thinks one can be a non-naturalist, but it doesn’t work at all. Ironically, it collapses into moral cognitivism without an objective basis.

The evidence on mental health towards homosexuals indicates that any sort of conversion program only results in harm. But letting people have sex how they want to doesn't result in harm.

First of all, it obviously harms them to engage in these activities. E.g., anal sex, contrary to popular liberal studies and stats, does harm the anus over time—period. Likewise, ethically, it disorders the soul and body and inhibits the person from living their best life. In your view, which is very liberal, harm is something like ‘immediate physical damage’.

From a hedonist's perspective its your category that designates natural sex that's the sin because it results in harm, whereas the reverse does not.

Heterosexual acts is natural; but even that has to be ordered properly for the good of the people having it. The idea that pleasure (or avoiding pain) is the highest form of good for humans is simply not true; and homosexual acts are not natural just because people do it.

I'm not saying you're a Nazi, I'm saying you're going down an intellectual path of dehumanizing that the Nazi intelegentsia went down to rationalize their actions and support of the regime. If a group of people is naturally defective and deviant, that's just a stone's throw away from subhuman, and once they're subhuman...

My friend, it isn’t a stone throw away; and this is why this is really just a straw man to justify one’s own ideas without contending with their opposition. This same argument applies to all defects which we normally would recognize and try to cure without accepting Nazism; for example, if what counts an idea as a ‘stone throw away’ from Nazism is that the idea implies that ‘a group of people are naturally defective’ in some way, then every person that holds that people with physical deformities is a ‘stone throw away’ from Nazism. What is happening here, with all due respect, is your are inadvertently attacking an obvious straw man.

I'm a consequentialist, so if the fate of the world was at stake and we all die if I unhook myself,

Ok, that makes more sense: you do not believe that “the ends do not justify the means”.

What equation are you using as a consequentialist to evaluate the (im)permissibility of killing the violinist?

So, if closing a wound that's keeping the violinist alive is morally permissible, how could it be impermissible to remove the tubes from my body that are keeping him alive?

Because you are coming at this from the perspective of consequentialism; which makes no regard for evaluating the permissibility of an act but, instead, looks at the consequences and circumstances to determine what to do. In consequentialism, all acts are inherently neutral.

In my view, I am evaluating the intrinsic rightness or wrongness of the act itself first; and then looking to the circumstances if permissible. The difference here is that I am noting an important distinction, completely missing in consequentialistic thought, between something being directly and indirectly intentional.

Ah, but this violates (3). But your position cannot be that abortion is impermissible if the life of the mother is at stake. 

This just begged the question. You just said:

1. Abortion is permissible if the mother’s life is at risk.
2. This mother’s life is at risk.
C: It is permissible for the mother to abort.

As I said before, murder is intrinsically wrong—which isn’t true in your consequentialistic view and necessarily so due to the nature of that family of normative ethical theories—and the ends do not justify the means; consequently, a mother cannot murder someone to save her own life.

In fact, this is standard in society other than with abortion. If my life is on the line, no matter how grave, and I murder someone to save myself I will, in fact, get charged with murder and condemned for it. Consequentialism is not compatible with the modern justice system.

An innocent person in a psychotic rage from an unforeseen drug interaction is certainly "unworthy to be killed", but it's not murder if they get killed in self defense.

There’s two ways to think about self-defense as permissible:

A) What is directly intended is not killing the person but, rather, neutralizing them as a threat (which is distinct from murder); or

B) It is not the killing of an innocent person.

Now, you bring up a good point in this example that this perpetrator is not culpable themselves for the attack (e.g., perhaps they are hallucinating and relative to their perspective they are stopping something grave from happening [although it isn’t really happening that way]); and so they are innocent intuitively. I was challenging the idea that they are to be see as innocent; but we can also go the A route and note that this ‘innocent person’ is a threat to this victim (of no fault of their own) objectively; and so the victim is justified in directly intending to neutralize the threat—even if that has a side effect of killing them.

I do think that is a really good example you gave their that challenges my idea of innocence.

Suppose you've been kidnapped and while you're locked in the dungeon, you've rigged up a booby trap to kill the kidnapper. A heavy weight will fall on him

RogueAI, you are missing the point my friend! Killing the baby in this case is indirectly intentional which, therefore, cannot be murder. Whether or not this is permissible is evaluating fundamentally differently than abortion, with the principle of double effect. In this example you gave, we are evaluating if it is permissible to bring about a bad side effect of killing the baby; whereas in abortion we are evaluating if it is permissible to bring use the death of the baby as a means towards our end.

No I wouldn't. No one uses the term 'natural' to refer to every act of any organism. That would collapse the distinction, in that context of its usage, into triviality; and there's no need to cite the Bible for this. An atheist can accept that the natural vs. non-natural distinction is here referring to what is in the real nature of a thing; and so behavior contrary to it is unnatural.

You stated:

Calling an entire class of people mentally ill couldn't be more bigoted. Try applying that to any other group.

I responded by pointing out that this line of thinking would entail that every classification of a mental illness is bigoted:

Hypericin, my friend, if that is true, then the acknowledgement of any mental illness is bigotry; for every recognition of a mental illness in principle applies to an entire class of people affected. Is that really what you believe?

Which you now responded with:

This is childish sophistry

What is sophistical about the argument I made? Hypericin, this is not a ‘gotcha’ moment: I think we both understand that what you said is not coherent and was a consequence of the way you feel about a person’s rejection of gender theory. Clearly, it is not bigoted to believe that some condition is a mental illness.

Whereas you, on the basis of a very dubious metaphysics

This is question begging; and I would like to note, despite we wanting to converse with you, that you have never once attempted to address the metaphysical claims in the OP.

are diagnosing a group which is not definitionally ill

Are you implying that you think that transgenderism definitionally entails that it is not a mental illness? If so, then what about the definition of transgenderism necessitates that it is not a mental illness?

As mental illness is universally undesirable, you are saying that membership in this group entails being innately less than the general population. That is just bigotry

I never once said that a transgender person is less than human or the “general population”: you are arguing against a straw man here. Likewise, even if I grant your claim, that’s not what bigotry is. Bigotry is an obstinate and stubborn attachment to an unreasonable position.

With all that aside, I would love to discuss with you the OP if you would like to have a productive conversation about gender theory and the alternative Aristotelian one I gave.

The logical law I referenced was Humes' Law - the illicit move from ought to is.

My friend, you have to appreciate that Hume’s Law is not a law of logic. If not, then please give me the logical theory in which it is derivable from or an axiom of; or, better yet, how it is derivable from classical logic.

Moreover, you seem to be insinuating that Humeanism is commonly accepted in metaethics; and I think we both charitably know this is patently false.

But you rejection of possible world semantics is of a par with, say, accepting algebra but rejecting calculus

I reject the possible worlds interpretation of modal logic: I’ve never been inclined to reject all of the operators, axioms, and formulas of it.

But you are in effect claiming that your preferences are built in to the world.

That is true if you are a moral anti-realist, which you aren’t either. Moral realism, both non-naturalism and naturalism, hold, necessarily, that moral judgments are proposition, express something objective, and at least one is true. They do not express something objective if you think that they are preferences.

I am sort of remembering out past conversations about it now: am I correct in remembering that you are just a moral cognitivist and not a moral realist (as described above with the standard three-pronged thesis of moral cognitivism, moral objectivism, and moral non-nihilism)?

That they re physical.

The fact that moral judgments express something objective does not entail that they are grounded in something material (i.e., tangible) nor physical (i.e., mind-independent). Moral properties being natural, likewise, only entails that they are innate to the nature of the thing in question: that doesn’t mean they are physical or material per se. In the case of Aristotelian thought, being hylomorphic, a material being’s form is not material nor truly immaterial (as a separate substance) but, rather, both comprise the substance itself. So if the form of a material being grounds its moral properties then it follows that moral properties are grounded neither in the physical or material as properly understood in modern times.

You do understand that differentiating S5 from S4 requires possible world semantics, don't you?

Can you elaborate? I haven’t brushed up on my modal logic in a while. Most of the operators and formulas I don’t remember disagreeing with: it’s the theory they use to describe it as possible worlds that I quibble with.

Sure, ◇□P → □P is valid in S5, 

Yes, this is a problem; and I think any possible worlds theory of interpretation of modal logic will have to accept S5: I don’t think the previous “versions” are ones we can revert back to.

is not automatically justified. ☐P only entails that P is true in all possible worlds; it does not by itself specify existence in the actual world unless P is an existential proposition. Modal logic distinguishes between truth across possible worlds and existence in the actual world

But isn’t the actual world a possible world in possible world’s theory? I though necessary X entails that X is in every possible world and the actual world is a world that could possibly exist because it does exist: it’s existence proves its possibility under the theory. No?

Here's an idea: lets' seperate the biological category from its social expression - to make this clear, we cpoudl call the former "sex", and the latter "gender"... that will avoid the circularity of “Feminine expression is inseparable from femaleness → therefore feminine expression must reflect biological sex.”

CC: @RogueAI, @hypericin, @unenlightened, @Tom Storm, @Leontiskos, @Moliere

Let’s go with your semantics to demonstrate my point, because semantics here doesn’t matter (philosophically). The social expression, the gender, of sex is not itself ontologically tied to sex: it is an epistemic symbolism of society’s understanding of the ontological reality of sex and its tendencies. Gender, in this sense, is just society’s beliefs about sex and its tendencies.

A natural tendency of the particular sex that has a procreative nature (like male and female as opposed to an asexual being) would not be identical to the social expressions: it would be the ontologically upshot of the sex. Society could get its symbols completely wrong about those tendencies and natural behaviors of the given sex and this would have no affect on the reality of those tendencies and would just mean that this particular society got it all wrong. These tendencies, grounded in sex, are what would be called masculinity for males and femininity for females for humans. Someone can mimick each to their liking, but they have a real basis in sex and its natural tendencies.

The sex, as you call it, and the tendencies due to that sex are virtually but not really distinct. If you have a being, no matter how imperfectly instantiated, that is of sex M then they will have tendencies T<M> which will naturally flow, no matter how inhibited or malnourished, from that type of being M. You cannot have a man, in nature, in form, who doesn’t have masculinity flowing from that nature (no matter how imperfectly: yes, this includes super-feminine men!); just as trilaterality and triangularity cannot be found in existence separate from one another.

Can we agree on this (notwithstanding the semantic disputes)???

Hypericin, my friend, if that is true, then the acknowledgement of any mental illness is bigotry; for every recognition of a mental illness in principle applies to an entire class of people affected. Is that really what you believe?

I am making a very reasonable claim that recognizing something as a mental illness does not entail that one is obstinately or unreasonably or stubbornly attached to a the belief that it is (I.e., is a bigot about it being) a mental illness nor that they hate those who have the illness. This honestly should be a point we can find common ground on.

Now a "bigot" is someone "obstinately attached to a belief or opinion" - like someone who would reject a rule of logic in order to insist that homosexuality was degenerate. Hmm.

I didn’t reject a law of classical logic...unless you are suggesting that everyone needs to accept every theory of logic available—including paraconsistent logic?

Likewise, rejecting modal logic does not mean I am obstinately attached to my beliefs: an obstinate attachment is a stubborn and unreasonable attachment to something—you know that, Banno.

Physics is not ethics.

Moral naturalism doesn’t claim that physics is ethics.

You continue to frame the issue as ontological. That's part of your error.

It is ontologically: it is a question about whether or not essences are real. You cannot sit here and claim that essence realism is about whether or not essences are real and hold that it isn’t ontological. That’s what ontology is: the study of reality (being). I am surprised you are claiming it isn’t ontological: what is it then for you? Epistemic?

(1) is blatantly incorrect; the outermost mode determines the overall mode, so it would be possibly necessary → possibly

That’s blatantly not true, my friend! S5 modal logic is the most commonly accepted version of modal logic; and in that theory “possibly necessarily X → necessarily X → X”. In other words, “possibly X” equates to “X exists in at least one possible world”; “necessarily X” equates to “X exists in all possible worlds"; consequently, “possibly necessarily X” equates to “X exists in at least one possible world as necessarily X”; which, in turn, equates to “X exists in at least one possible world such that X a necessary being in it”; which, in turn, equates to “X exists in all possible worlds (since X exists as a necessary being in this possible world)”; which entails that “X must exist in the real world being that it is one of those possible worlds”.

Nor is there a conflation of conceivability with modality. Possible because it is so brief, the reasons given here appear muddled. If you are going to reject an accepted part of modern logic, then you ought provide good, clear reasons.

I gave a clear explanation of an alternative view that is common. Possible worlds are conceivable worlds unless you are suggesting that we have a sound methodology for determining when a world is possible (that I am not aware of).

How odd. So instead you take your own attitudes as being necessarily universal.

That’s not what I said. Moral non-naturalism suffers from being incapable of explaining what the property of goodness refers to exactly because it cannot equate it with a natural property. What is goodness under your view? What ontologically grounds it?

I already have, in the post I already linked.

This gets at your other post:

Before you so quickly give the thumbs up, look at what Leon is saying. I gave reference to a thread that leads to a book and a whole literature that sets out the difference between brute and social facts, which Leon dismissed as "failing to engage with the topic".

I am glad you are engaging in the thread, but you are refusing to explain your theory to me and instead are trying to book-drown me. It is a form of refusing to engage to try to tell someone to “read these 50 books and get back to me, then I’ll respond”. If someone doesn’t understand Aristotelianism and I am conversing with them, there is a difference between me suggesting books for them to read and engaging with them vs. refusing to engage by gate-keeping via trying to force them to read 20 books before I will engage with them.

What a terrible argument. A woman wearing a dress is not like a triangle's having three sides.

I don’t think you are appreciate fully what I said. When a woman wears a dress it isn’t itself a part of their gender: it is the symbol which represents their expression of their sex (i.e., the symbol that represents their gender). You can separate the dress-wearing from femaleness, but you can’t separate the feminine expression of femaleness that it represents from the sex (femaleness) that it represents. That’s the part that is virtually distinct.

Again, you are thinking gender is separable from sex; and this is where your objection really lies here.

It's not baseless. You would oblige others to express only your attitudes. Have a think about why folk might draw this sort of comparison, even if unjustly.

They are drawing it so they can conveniently evade discussing gender theory with me: instead, they find some super vague and unwarranted correlation between viewing transgenderism as a mental illness and horrific deeds done by Nazism and decide to blatantly mischaracterize my views as Nazi. The Nazis were not just viewing transgenderism as an illness to be cured: they were hateful towards them and persecuted them. It is unacceptable to label my view as Nazi. Surely you can see that, right?

 I am allowed to remove tubes that were put into me without my consent

At any cost? With any means?

 Suppose instead of tubes connected to me, the violinist was being kept alive from blood running from an open wound on my side into him. Closing my wound would be an action but is your position that closing my own wound would be morally impermissible if it results in the violinist's death?

That’s a good question. I would say that it would be indirectly intentional because their death would be a (bad) side effect of the means (of closing the wound); and the principle of double effect has to be used to determine its permissibility or impermissibility. This is important because this is disanalogous to abortion: an abortion is where the human in the womb is directly intentionally killed (analogous to shooting the violinist in the head).

I think, in this case, it would be permissible because it is:

1. A good end;
2. There is no other means to facilitate that end;
3. The means is not bad; and
4. The good end outweighs the bad effect.

In the case of abortion, #3 is necessarily false.

This is the difference between, for example, the permissibility of performing a hysterectomy on a pregnant women with terminal cancer to save her from that cancer which will inevitably lead to the human in the womb dying; vs. an abortion where the human in the womb is directly intentionally killed to facilitate the end of upholding the woman’s bodily autonomy.

I'm OK with that. If a psychotic innocent person is trying to kill me, and I directly intentionally kill them in self defense, it's not murder, right?

I would say they are innocent in the sense you mean of ‘not intending to do you harm’ but they are not innocent in the relevant sense of ‘being unworthy of being killed’. This is a really good thought experiment though, as it challenges my idea of innocence.

I would prefer to unplug them and let them die naturally of whatever was killing them before they were hooked up to me, but if shooting them is the only way to do it, it's morally permissible

But, then, you are advocating that murder is permissible in some cases. Wouldn’t you agree that killing them by putting a bullet in their head is murder?

:up:

You are right. I misspoke - my sentence above is wrong. One can presumably use “degenerate” to accurately describe some people’s activities.

No worries! This is what I was trying to get you to see, because all you are doing is begging the question with:

Of course, I would not include gay people or most sexual acts, like fellatio, as you do. Your bar for degeneracy is low. Calling gay people and their preferences morally corrupt or less than human, which “degeneracy” implies, would qualify as bigotry.

Firstly, as I noted to you in a DM, I understand that the term ‘degenerate’ is provocative but it is not bigoted. I usually avoid using it, especially with people from the LGBTQ+ community, because it is provocative; but I do think it is degenerate, bad (as a sexual orientation), and immoral (as an act). I would like to note that I did not use that term in the OP: I used it in a side conversation with a fellow in the thread (about a loosely related but not identical topic).

I mean degenerate in the sense of ~“having lost the physical, mental, or moral qualities considered normal and desirable; showing evidence of decline.” This is standardly true for homosexuality if one believes it is bad and immoral. This does not mean that human beings that have homosexual tendencies are ‘less than human’ in their dignity or that we should persecute them. In fact, this is why I keep using schizophrenia as an analogy: we would never say that schizophrenics have less than human dignity because they are inflicted with a condition that deprives them of realizing aspects of their human nature. Human dignity is grounded in the human nature someone has, which is grounded in their substantial form—their soul, and not how realized they are at that nature. Every human is fully a human; even if they are missing limbs, are disabled, have diseases, are ill, have mental issues, etc. because they fully have the form of a human.

Like I said before, you are presupposing that it is true that homosexual acts are not ‘morally corrupt’; and then based off of that saying it is not degenerate. I understand from your view that makes sense, but in mine it doesn’t because it is immoral (viz., ‘morally corrupt’). What we would need to discuss is why.

I’m not someone who reaches for “degenerate” as a descriptive term in most serious discussions. What consenting adults do is not my business. One might be able to apply the term upon the actions and lives of Trump or Epstein.

I wasn’t using it as a descriptive term in any heavy sense on here either. Somehow someone saw one post I made to one person about an unrelated topic and now we are going down a rabbit hole about ‘degeneracy’. The OP is about gender theory, and makes no reference to degeneracy.

It's not murder. Innocent people sometimes can be justifiably killed. In the violinist analogy, if you remove the tubes from yourself that are keeping the violinist alive, you are not actively killing him, you are failing to render aid. You do not have a moral duty to render aid to people that are hooked up to you without your consent.

I agree that innocent people can be justifiably killed; but only when it is indirectly intentional (in some cases). You are (directly) intending to kill them by pulling the plug knowing that they will die and that this is a means towards your end of detaching your body. You are not failing to render aid: that would be an inaction (e.g., not helping someone that is drowning) or an act that fails to achieve its end (e.g., you are trying to help the drowning person but they end up drowning anyways)—neither are the case in this case. You are acting by pulling the plug: that’s an action. You might argue that this action is justified, but then you are committed to the view that directly intentionally killing an innocent person is not always murder.

Let’s make it even more explicit what I am arguing. Imagine to pull the plug you had to walk over to the other person and put a bullet in their head to kill them off before pulling it. Would you find that morally permissible? Is it distinct from merely pulling the plug under your view?

@Banno, this the kinds of baseless hate I get on here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1021010 . Now RogueAI, instead of dealing with my response, is trying to paint me as a Nazi now (apparently).

I do not condone Nazism: period. Wanting to help people who have illnesses and deprivations of their nature, out of love and compassion, is not the same as trying to exterminate people on the basis of sexual orientation, transgenderism, etc. I am not advocating to send people to camps; or to forceably inject them with experimental drugs or something. This is all just a convenient way for RogueAI to evade a discussion with my views by labeling me as an extremist.

This is no different than how a person can argue that we should try to find a cure and help schizophrenics without committing them to the view that schizophrenics should be sent to concentration camps. This should be painfully obvious to everyone.

This makes no sense

My response was using a leeway conception of freedom.

Would you say that tool-making is an unnatural use of the hands

What unnatural usages of hands? Can you give an example?

 or an ostrich's use of their wings in mating practices unnatural?

Wings aren’t just for flying: they can be for steering, mating rituals, etc.; just like lips can be for kissing as well as speaking.

Some species may have aspects of their nature that are just the residual affects of evolution; and so they may not have as much of a use, although they would still be designed that way, comparatively. E.g., an ostrich’s wings aren’t quite as useful as a normal bird’s wings. You are confusing utility with teleology: there is nothing random about evolution.

Agents can do things that go against their nature. This is an age-old liberal point that is false. Just because animals have the agency to go against their nature it doesn't mean that it is in their nature to do it. You would have to commit yourself to the absurd view that everything a natural organism does is natural.

Probably not. There's no marriage in heaven, so I would presume there's no genders.

To be clear, I don't hate you. If you are every over this way I would buy you a beer and have a chat with you.

I appreciate that, and I do not hate you either.

That accusation of name-calling - I'm here, and I've just spent a half-hour responding to your post with an extended account of why I think it problematic. That's a lot more than just name-calling.

It seems like you are conceding you have name-called but that you are engaging with the discussion simultaneously: as of now, I agree with that. My complaint was twofold: you don’t usually engage with me on the topic-at-hand and you name-call. Either way, I appreciate you responding and engaging with the discussion: that is what really matters and is respectable.

They are not; they are an ought imposed by you over and above the is of how things are

I forgot that you are a moral non-naturalist: this OP is presupposing a form of moral naturalism. I don’t accept Hume’s guillotine. We can discuss that if you want, but I do need to address:

You are welcome to your views, and you are welcome to express them. What is objectionable is the pretence that your attitudes are natural, such that they are the inevitable outcome of how things are. They are not; they are an ought imposed by you over and above the is of how things are

Moral naturalism shouldn’t be objectionable to you in a way where one resorts to name-calling and censorship. All the above amounts to is you being compelled by moral non-naturalism to reject moral naturalism, which is perfectly fine and we can have a robust conversation about it.

The US has an infatuation with free speech not found elsewher

I think all countries would be better off mirroring American values. Free speech is essential to exercising our minds properly which the nation-state should be facilitating; and it allows for healthy dissent against the government.

Or rather,
it pretends to allow anyone to say what they please, the practical outcome of which is to have speech controlled by the very rich. As the criticism of Feyerabend says, "anything goes" just means that nothing changes

Capitalism and corportism is what causes the rich controlling the media and manipulating the masses—not free speech. Even in a heavily censored and rich-controlled media, as we have seen in America, people are able to voice their beliefs without fear of governmental backlash; and people prevail against social backlash for exercising free speech—they get fed up with liberal censorship.

As a philosopher, I am surprised you reject american-style free speech: I would have imagined you to support the free exercise of our intellect to help further ideas and shape people’s views with critical thinking.

Do you think that the forums should drop the rule agains posting bigotry and racism?

Firstly, I cannot emphasize enough that this thread is not an example of either of those. Secondly, I would say that the rules should allow for a free marketplace of ideas and the free conversing and exchange of them (intellectually). The purpose behind free speech in America is not to have absolute free speech (like some conservatives think): it’s to allow us to freely exercise our mind’s natural ends through intellectual pursuits.

With that in mind, the rules should ban the exercise of speech that is not aimed at the exercise of the intellect (through free exchange of ideas) and are harmful. This would include exercises of speech like obvious trolling, bullying, inciting of violence, etc.

This thread is obviously only attempting to defend and discuss an alternative view of gender theory as well as, it developing into a discussion of, defending conservative views that relate to the philosophical position at hand.

The categories you gave don’t cleanly fit into this dichotomy. For example, take racism: what if someone wanted to have an intellectual discussion about race realism vs. anti-realism? That’s technically a differentiation based off of race, which meets the modern definition of racism; but it would be an intellectual pursuit. What if, on the other hand, someone opened up a thread to just bash a particular race? That seems inappropriate, as it is not ordered towards intellectual exchange of ideas.

Read the OP again: does it resemble more the attempt at an intellectual exchange of ideas or a bashing of liberals?

I even updated it to change the semantics to help further the discussion (while retaining the original content in strikeout)!

Not quite. It's not uncommon to presume that either realism is true or nominalism is true. But the two are not exhaustive, nor mutually exclusive. There are intermediate or alternative responses that avoid the simple binary. For example, Kant's conceptualism, Ramsey's pragmatism 

Categorically, either ontologically there are real essences to things or there are not: those are exhaustive. The other options you gave aren’t about ontology: they are epistemic. Kant famously denied knowing anything about the things-in-themselves: he was an agnostic on the true debate between nominalists and realists to the strongest extent of thinking we can’t ever know; and shifted the focus to the a prior modes by which we cognize reality.

imposes a nature as much as it shows a nature.

Are you taking a Kantian approach here?

What you are doing here is stipulating that certain characteristics determine who is human and who isn't, and then insisting on explaining away any falsification of your stipulation as aberrant

I haven’t heard anything from you that is something that falsifies my view. I am more than happy to entertain it if you provide some.

Then you reject the most coherent semantics for modal language, a framework that allows modality to be expressed without incoherence or circularity. What is your alternative?

Two main reasons I reject PWT:

1. Under this view, possibly necessary → necessary → existence. This exposes the fatal flow in thinking of these modalities in terms of conceivable worlds.

2. It conflates conceivability with modality. Something is not merely possible because I can conceive of it in a possible world. In fact, no human can know exactly what is possible and what isn’t. This is why I prefer to use the modalities in a stricter, negative sense of evaluating it relative to whether or not it ‘violates the mode of thought’. For example, X is possible under M IFF under interpretation M X does not violate the laws therein. Viz., it is logically possible IFF it doesn’t violate the theory of logic being used; it is metaphysically possible IFF it doesn’t violate the theory of metaphysics being used; it is actual possible IFF it doesn’t violate the theory of nature (the universe) being used. This protects us from falling into the trap of conflating conceivability with possibility, necessity, contingency, etc.

 It's you and I who decide what is legitimate, not biology.

I don’t think moral non-naturalism works as it appeals to an unknown, incoherent source of morality (such as Moorean thought) and essentially is just moral anti-realism with the false veil of objectivity (no offense!).

Goodness, under the Aristotelian view, is the equality of a being’s essence and esse; which is identical, given the form vs. being distinction, to being as convertible with goodness—as the more being a thing has the more realized it is at what it is.

So the way reality is, in form—in essence, does dictate how things ought to be.

E.g., a good farmer is not hypothetically good at farming; nor is he subjectively (non-objectively) good at farming: he actually is good at farming. He is objectively good at farming because he embodies the essence of farming in virtue and deed. His being is realizing the essence of farming properly.

Not quite; gender is fluid, because like all social artefacts it is the result of a "counts as..." statement (this is what @Leontiskos is missing). See my thread on John Searle if you need more explanation of this

This is interesting, but I didn’t quite follow: can you elaborate on it more?

You apparently want sex to count as gender, failing to notice the very many differences between our uses of the two terms.

Ok, so, in good faith, I altered the OP to make a conceptual but not real distinction between gender and sex to account for this and help avoid other confusions other people have been having. Please take a quick look at the OP and let me know what you think: I kept the old text in strikeout and the new in bold. The semantics don’t really matter that much to the underlying content I am conveying. The point is that gender is not a social construct.

 No it isn't - it's against what was presumed to count as natural, but which doesn't.

This begs the question: I am saying it really “counts as” a part of their nature because they really have a nature. You are denying they really have a nature and your rebuttle here is to presuppose that they don’t really have a nature and that I am just “counting it as” a nature when it isn’t. That’s the whole point in contention, though.

Take the thought experiment to its logical conclusion: instead of the violinist being hooked up to you for 9 months, he's hooked up to you for 45 years and during that time, you're in total physical agony. And also, he's not just hooked up to you, he's hooked up to a thousand other people, all necessary to keep him alive. But why stop at a thousand? Let's say it's a million people. A billion. 

With all due respect, my friend, I think you are not appreciating what I am saying: I already addressed and anticipated this rejoinder. Even if the consequences of not murdering the violinist were the most grave and insufferable that a human can conceive of, it is still immoral to murder; so it is immoral to do so.

Even if everyone else was perpetually hooked up to this terrifying scientific experiment, it would not make it permissible to murder someone. What you are arguing is that ‘murder is wrong’ and simultaneously ‘but if the consequences of doing the right thing are too grave, then murder is not wrong’.

Is your position still that it's immoral for any one of those people to unhook themselves and end all the suffering? 

So this depends on if the killing is directly intentional. I am assuming here, for the sake of my point, that unplugging is an directly intentional act to kill the other people hooked up. If so, then that’s murder and is immoral.

Homosexuality is defective: it can be defective biologically and/or socio-psychologically. Heterosexuality is defective sometimes socio-psychologically.

Homosexuality is always defective because, at a minimum, it involves an unnatural attraction to the same sex which is a privation of their human nature (and usually of no real fault of their own); whereas heterosexuality is not per se because, at a minimum, it involves the natural attraction to the opposite sex.

Now, heterosexuality can be defective if the person is engaging in opposite-sex attraction and/or actions that are sexually degenerate; but this will always be the result of environmental or/and psychological (self) conditioning. The underlying attraction is not bad: it's the lack of disciple, lack of habit towards using that attraction properly, and (usually) uncontrollable urges towards depriving sexual acts.

Calling people degenerate is bigotry.

Even if it really is degenerate? This is the basic, colloquial definition of bigotry:

“obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.”

You are begging the question because you are presupposing that my belief that, e.g., “engaging in BDSM is sexually degenerate” is true is unreasonable and false; but that’s the whole point in contention here, and what you are doing is labeling me with a word that no one wants to be labeled with so that it is easier to evade contending with my claim.

Do you think engaging in BDSM, e.g., is not sexually degenerate? If not, then what would count as sexually degenerate under your view and would any concession of the possibility of sexual degeneracy be considered bigotry on your view?

 If I said theists are delusional and need to be cured of their magical thinking, that would be the same thing.

Firstly, I don’t think all members of the LGBTQ+ community are delusional. Secondly, you could very well make the claim that theists are delusional and I would ask you for your reasons why and contend with them without name-calling.

Notice that you haven't presented an 'argument' to refute.

This isn’t directly relevant to the OP: you ended up critiquing a claim I made to someone else on here. The natural ends of a sex organ, as a sex organ, is to procreate; which is exemplified by its shape, functions (e.g., ejaculation, erections, etc. for a penis), and its evolutionary and biological relation to the opposite (supplementary) sex organ of the opposite sex.

Your contention seems to be:

Now, even if we take a neutral view that human bodies evolved over time to have certain functions, that still doesn’t amount to an argument against using a penis for anal sex

A function is just the modern term for design; and I understand that I didn’t make an argument for why it is wrong. I was giving you an example to demonstrate that it is bad. Badness is the privation of goodness; and goodness is the equality of a being’s essence and esse. Rightness and wrongness are about behaving in accord or disaccord with what is good (respectively). If you don’t agree with me that it is a privation of the design (or ‘function’) of the human sex organs to be put in places they are designed to go, all else being equal, then we need to hash that out first.

 if it can be done, it's natural.

Not everything that is done is natural. By ‘natural’, in natural law theory, we mean that it flows from the nature of a given being.

Agency allows beings to freely will against their nature; so it can’t be true that every act is natural.

when a man puts his penis in a woman’s mouth, is that also a violation of design according to you?

Yes.

Or using fingers for typing?

Fingers are designed to be used to press, pull, and grab things: that’s there evolutionary purpose. That’s why thumbs are so awesome.

Who decides what counts as a violation of usage and who decides what counts as design?

Not who, my friend, what. The nature of a being is ingrained in them. We can come to know that nature through introspection, science, metaphysics, etc. E.g., we can see, through studying biology and empirically living in the world, that human’s are supposed to have two arms: this is a part of what it means to be a human being as opposed to, e.g., a dolphin.

Not really. If you say gay and tans people are deviant, you are saying bigoted things. You are presenting a moral judgment founded in bias and stigma. It's textbook bigotry.

You are just begging the question: why is it a bias and stigma? I presented non-biased, rational, and cogent reasons for, e.g., homosexuality being a privation of human nature. We haven’t dived into transgenderism as a mental illness that much yet; but the same can be done there too. Why do you so conveniently assume your opposition is operating under a bias and prejudice? What if I just assumed right back at you that you are being biased against my view and biased in favor of LGBTQ+?

That's just an example of argumentum ad populum. I'm sure as many Americans probably think the world is only 6,000 years old. Who cares how many think something?

I am not suggesting that it is true because a lot of people believe it. I was bringing that up because you seemed to be evading the discussion by name-calling and acting like this view is niche in America. I am just noting it is not niche at all.

Saying “the penis isn’t designed for anal sex” isn’t an argument; it’s just an unsupported assertion

My friend, every claim is an assertion; and every premise of an argument is an assertion. You ask me why homosexuality is bad and I give you a cogent example: it’s fine if you don’t agree with it and we can dive in deeper, but this idea that ‘because it is an assertion it is baseless’ isn’t legitimate. Every statement is an assertion. Reason works by working finitely at an argument: it starts with first-order reasons, then second-order, etc.

Anyway, I'll let you have the last word since this seems to be going nowhere. I suspect that we don't have enough in common to build a productive conversation. I have nothing against you as a person and wish you well. I have no doubt that you are sincere and doing the best you can with your thinking and I would say the same applies to me. I’d be interested in a thread soem time about how we can have conversations with people who don’t share basic axioms or frameworks, and how we can develop a society that allows for pluralism.

I wish you the best as well and I have no doubt that you are genuine and sincere in your pursuit of the truth. I think we could try to find some common ground if you would like.

I believe we have discussed this before. Allowing evil is itself a kind of evil. God permitted the Holocaust, for which he must take at least some responsibility.

I believe we did discuss this before too: allowing evil may be evil but is not necessarily evil. E.g., if I can only save a person from getting murdered by doing evil, then allowing the evil of that person getting murdered is morally permissible and, in this case, obligatory. You are omitting a crucial distinction between the moral evaluation of omissions and commissions.

This is an easy mentality for intelligent and learned people to fall into.

I agree with everything said here; but it doesn’t address my point. I am not trying to convey that we should have a superiority complex, posture, or gate-keep: I am saying that how one conveys message is contextual to the audience that they are trying to receive it. You have to convey things in a simplified way to the average person to get them to gravitate, or even think about, your view. If you sit down and give an elaborate theory philosophically in front of the average, hard-working American; they are not going to understand you: not because they are stupid, but because they lack the education on that specific topic. We are all affected by this too: there’s plenty of topics I am grossly uneducated on as well and someone educated on it would have to dumb it down for me too.

Having spoken with you over the years I am sure you have nothing but good intentions. However, this is a philosophy board and not a political one. Being simple in language is a virtue, but treating people here as simple is not. People want to be inspired by thinking about something in an enlightened way, not riled up against a perceived enemy. The enemy is not other people here, but unclear thinking captured by unwarranted assertions and unexamined assumptions.

Over-simplification is not a virtue; but being able to convey a message in a contextually useful way that is simple for people to understand is...and that is what I am advocating for. I do see and agree with your point: I agree that we should be intellectually virtuous, and I am not suggesting we should do otherwise. I am pointing out that you have to make your message receptive to your audience, and also helpful for them to avoid semantic traps. Gender theory is a gigantic semantic trap—as you yourself even admitted (if I remember correctly)—and I am providing an alternative view that uses a different schema to help ward of that trap.

Since I think people on this forum (excluding some like yourself of course) seem to be incapable of dealing legitimately with an opposing view that they adamantly disagree with; I am going to rewrite the OP, while preserving the original content, to use the schema that conceptually separates gender and sex to help them understand my position better. At the end of the day I am only interested in furthering the discussion to get at the truth; so if rewording it helps then I am fine with that.

Declaring without a carefully reasoned and referenced view as to why trans people are sexually deviant is an attack on a section of people, which I feel we should all be careful in doing in a thinking forum. What makes them deviant?

Firstly, this wasn’t in the OP: I mentioned this to someone on a broader discussion about politics. This is not a claim I am making that is pertinent to the OP.

I think the LGBQ+ community is a community of sexually deviant people: they embrace sexuality in an grossly overly-exhalted way and engage in what would be normally considered sexually extreme or deviant acts. Granted, ‘sexual deviancy’ tends to be evaluated inter-subjectively (on what the social norms currently are); but having oral sex, anal sex, engaging in pornos, having orgies, enjoying sissification, BDSM, etc. are all sexually deviant acts that are a part of and quite closely connected to that community. Even in the case of less deviant people, like a less deviant homosexual couple for example, they tend to do deviant sex acts (like anal sex, for example). There are sexually deviant straight people too.

Philosophy is about questioning, exploring, and understanding. It is why I avoid politics in philosophical discussions, because I feel the two can rarely meet together properly.

The problem with this is that philosophy is supposed to inform politics. My metaphysics on gender and sex are informing my political views on gender theory and vice-versa for my opponents. Politics is not separable from philosophy.

Just a reminder not to get too wrapped up in passion that we forget the role of philosophy here. Careful definitions, attacks on words and not people, and listening to and addressing others concerns even if it appears they are not being charitable back.

Fair enough and I agree!

That's utterly irrelevant to what I was saying. I was arguing that inserting a penis in an anus violates the natural ends of both organs.

Thomson's violinist analogy is so obviously right in its conclusion

Is it?

I can't fathom the thought processes required to come to the conclusion that

Well, that’s a problem. I understand why someone would conclude that they could cut the cord...otherwise I couldn’t really say that I am right in my conclusion that they are wrong. How do you know I am wrong about it being immoral to murder the violinist even towards the good end of saving yourself if you don’t understand why someone would take that position?

Just to be clear, is that really your position?

P1: Murder is the direct intentional killing of an innocent person.
P2: It is wrong to murder.
P3: Directly intentionally killing the innocent violinist is murder.
P4: Therefore, directly intentionally killing the innocent violinist is wrong.

What you are saying is:

P1: Involuntary use of a person’s body is a violation of a person’s right to bodily autonomy.
P2: A violation of a persons’ right to bodily autonomy is wrong.
P3: The innocent violinist is using a persons’ body without their consent.
P4: Therefore, it is wrong for the innocent violinist to use the person’s body without their consent.

What you are failing to understand is that the violinist is not the one violating this person’s bodily autonomy: it is the person who hooked them up to them that committed the violation and consequently the immoral act. Now, the violinist and the other victim are stuck in a predicament: how do they go about resolving it? Can they do something immoral to resolve it? No, but you are arguing “yes”: you are saying this victim can murder the violinist to resolve the situation. That’s wrong: two wrongs don’t make a right. Wouldn’t you agree?

One's penis can go anywhere one chooses (with consent). But anal sex is not compulsory, right? No one is saying it is, although it's a common heterosexual activity. And a question of 'design' has not been demonstrated. A penis fits inside holes. Are you also against sticking a penis in a woman's mouth? Where do you get the idea that any particular kind of sex act is somehow wrong?

To clarify, are you answering “no” to my question?!? You really don’t believe that a penis is not designed to be inserted into an anus?

I get that ‘design’ might be a strong word for you; but wouldn’t you say it at least is contrary to the ‘natural functions’ of the penis?

I am saying a particular kind of sex act is wrong if it is contrary to the natural ends and teleology of a human. I think this even holds in atheistic views that are forms of moral naturalism like Filippe Foote’s ‘natural goodness’.

There is a moral arbiter here, but you've not identified him. He is the one always working behind the scenes to try to censor the things he disagrees with instead of arguing against them.

@Banno, I try my best to avoid making serious accusations against my opponents and I want to be as charitable to them as possible, but given the staunch hatred I am getting on this thread for trying to discuss a basic and prominent topic I am inclined to agree here. This thread has unintentionally exposed members of this forum that are pro-censorship and that favor name-calling over intellectual conversations. With that being said, I truly commend @Jamal for respecting free speech here, although they disagree with the OP.

I did no such thing.

I apologize: I thought Jamal said you did—I must have misunderstood.

However to be clear, if it were in my power I would delete the thread as failing, under the mentioned guidelines. But it's not my call.

Ok, but this goes back to my main point: it is saddening that you are so anti-free-speech. What you are advocating for is to censor anyone who comes up with an alternative view to gender theory. This is a discussion with major philosophical backdroppings that needs to be sorted out in America and has profound influence on the rest of the world.

"Quiddity" treats essence as a thing to be discovered.

Correct; and to be clear: you are an anti-realist about essences if you disagree with the above quoted statement. You would have to be nominalist...that’s not a trivial commitment to have.

How are we to understand quiddity apart from our conceptual apparatus - apart from our use of language?

Linguistics isn’t identical to conceptualizations; but, beyond that, yes: if you are a realist about essences—if you are one of the many people in the world who think that, e.g., two humans really share a nature—then you have to explain how that works. The only way it works is if there is a unity—a whole—to a being which provides its intelligibility: there must be an actualizing principle. This provides the essences to things.

Possible world semantics makes no such metaphysical commitment

Your view seems very centered around possible world theory...which is fine; but, again, if you disagree that essences are real then you are saying that humans do not share a nature, two chairs don’t share a nature, etc.---viz., you are a nominalist.

This is just the age-old debate between nominalism and form realism rehashed.

as if it were a mere dogma of modality; it is, whether you like it or not, the very language in which modality is made coherent.

Firstly, I reject possible world theory (but we can discuss that if you would like). Secondly, why would we need to reject that, e.g., two humans share the same nature in order to accept that, e.g., possibly X is equal to X existing in some possible world?

And yet the result of that "purposeful collapse" is an inability to distinguish constructed social role from biological fact, and the claim to have demonstrated that biology determines social role

It doesn’t collapse in this way because I am claiming that the only social aspects of gender that are legitimate are those that are the upshot of one’s procreative nature; so there may, and usually are, social expectations and views of gender that are patently false that a society may have.

In your view and the modern gender theory view, it is impossible for a society to get a gender wrong; because it is purely a social construct. Sure, you may quibble with epistemically how to hash out when it is a true social norm that X gender does such-and-such and presents themselves in this-and-that manner; but fundamentally gender is inter-subjective on this view. It is anti-realism about gender akin to anti-realism about ethics: e.g., people who debate whether men should wear dresses are not giving judgments that express something objective no different than how people who debate whether killing babies for fun is wrong are not giving judgments that express something objective (under moral anti-realism).

You do no have to attend a drag show, but you have not given good reason to prevent others from doing so.

Because it is:

1. Harmful to children and incentivizes them to harm themselves;
2. Gravely harmful to the adults (participating); and
3. It exemplifies grave evil that society should not be condoning.

I'm not saying you are a bigot i said what you wrote was bigoted

This is an important distinction, but my rejoinder would be essentially the same. I don’t think you are writing bigotry by opposing stereotypical conservative values and beliefs. It seems way to convenient to label your most prominent opposition in America as all writing bigotry by noting that homosexuality, transgenderism, and sexually degenerate behavior is bad (for those participating in it).

 "Let's cure those deviants."

Imagine someone believed that transgenderism was a mental illness called ‘gender dysphoria’, akin to (but not identical to) someone with schizophrenia. Would you consider them a bigot or purporting bigotry by noting that we should help cure people with transgenderism just like we help schizophrenics???

 I think that’s fair; he was big on re-educating dissenters. What you think about Stalin is irrelevant to my point.

I don’t believe in re-educating dissenters. I am fine with free speech; however, it is commonly accepted that people who are extremely mentally (or/and physically) unwell need desperate help and they may be confined for a while for their own safety to themselves (like suicidal people for example). Should everyone who has a mental illness be put in a camp? No.

Wouldn’t you agree that being homosexual or transgender is a result of socio-psychological disorders or/and biological developmental issues?— Bob Ross

No, and this is another bigoted position.

Then you are, in fact, labeling your opposition as bigoted instead of refuting their position. I could easily say the same thing about your views: it doesn’t help further the conversation.

I don’t know you to establish how seriously you offer this, but that sentence reads like something a child would write, surely? I can't help but feel some compassion for you that your religion appears to have made you so reductive and homophobic.

Notice that you didn’t engage with what I said because it is obviously true. A sex organ is not designed to be inserted in an anus; even if you believe that it is morally permissible to do so. The fact you resort to name-calling as an evasion technique instead of rebuttling my position is saddening.

I could be wrong but from what I read here my view would be that it might benefit you to stop hiding behind theories, metaphysics, and fundamentalist religion, and get out into the real world. Spend time with lots of different kinds of people for a few years. Maybe some real-world exposure will help you understand the diversity and beauty in people who differ from your prescribed notions. And that perhaps what needs to change is you, not them.

Instead of making baseless assumptions about my life, begging the question, and name-calling; why don’t you just contend with the view?

That said, I’m glad you feel confident expressing your opinions here for us all to explore. It’s interesting to see what comes out in response, Perhaps it reveals a little more about the true nature of some of our members.

You do understand that the hugely popular conservative view right now in America is that transgenderism is a mental illness—right? You keep pretending like this is a crazy, outlandish, bigoted, and ‘transphobic’ position to take; and keep straw manning the position with name-calling and baseless assumptions to evade engaging in the discussion. Acknowledging that something is a mental illness does not entail that one hates people who have it….do you really not believe that???

With all that being said, I am always open-minded and would be glad to discuss the OP with you if you ever decide to engage with it instead of straw manning it with baseless name-calling. If not, no worries and I wish you the best Tom!

It is rather difficult to make sense of all this decarative definitional stuff, because your definitions are not clearly distinguished

What part of my definitions were not clear?

and at the same time fail to account for the variety of human behaviour and social relations

On the contrary, it accounts for the behavioral aspect of gender by noting that it is the upshot one’s nature; thusly avoiding the critical confusion of thinking gender is divorced from sex.

To be honest, I might just opt-in for the other schema I was playing with, of which I noted also depicts essentially the same ideas I am noting with the equality of sex and gender, that holds gender and sex as conceptually but not really distinct. That might help people avoid this (invalid) rejoinder that I am not accounting for the social aspects of how biological sex will tend to express itself.

Males can include gays, cross dressers, celibates castrati, none of whom tend to 'serve the role of providing, protecting, impregnating, etc. a female.'

Yes, but they are fully men because they have male souls; and they simply aren’t, in existence, properly living up to their nature.

I'm here, Bob.

I am glad to hear that, believe it or not (:

Next time, please tag me in the post so I get a notification. I just happen to see this post and otherwise wouldn’t have responded at all.

 I held off because it looked to me as if 
↪Jamal
 might be about to do something in accord with the guidelines, but it seems not.

Unless @Jamal would like to make the horrifying but typical liberal mistake of censoring those that have different philosophical views than them that help further the discussion on major political issues in America, I would suggest that the best response to a view that one gravely disagrees with is to contend with it and dismantle it for all to see instead of trying to put it in pandora’s box.

I would like to also say that I am disappointed that you decided to report the thread instead of contending with the ideas; especially since this touches on a very interesting debate between liberals and conservatives in america right now—this isn’t a niche position I am taking here (at least in America). The fact you would prefer it get censored is disheartening to me.

You claim your approach is neo-Aristotelian, but apart from the name, there's nothing to indicate why

Good question! It is Aristotelian because I am using his metaphysics through-and-through here, albeit it more Aristo-thomistic. The key metaphysical distinction I am making between the form and matter of a human is Aristotelian; and the very concepts of ‘substance’, ‘soul’, etc. I used are Aristotelian.

You say sex is "a distinct type of substance", a very odd phrasing; as if we could put sex on a scale and measure it's mass, or wash it down the drain

Interesting you would say that, considering I am openly using Aristotle’s metaphysics. A substance for Aristotle is an essentially ordered unity that exists by itself (e.g., water, iron, etc.) as opposed to an unessentially ordered unity for another (e.g., a chair, a table, etc.). Essentially vs. unessentially ordered unities is an essential aspect of Aristotelian thought.

More recent work uses possible world semantics and talks of essential properties rather than substance. An essence here becomes a predicate attributed to an individual in every possible world in which it exists.

That’s fine, but this would also be true for an essence as used in Aristotelian thought if one accepts possible world theory. I personally don’t, but I am willing to grant it for the sake of our conversation to see what you are thinking. An essence is just a quiddity: it is that is essential to a thing that makes it that thing. This is perfectly compatible with your description (although it is not a definition), given possible world theory, that it is about predicates “attributed to an individual in every possible world in which it exists”. That is just to reiterate, without defining an essence, that an in every possible world in which a being exists it would have to have its essential properties.

That is a much more workable definition than the nonsense of "that which makes something what it is, and not something else".

It’s just a broader definition that doesn’t require possible worlds theory. PWT has many issues with it.

CC: @Leontiskos

Keep offering philosophy to those who don't rise above name-calling. :up:— Leontiskos
That had me laughing out loud. No way to talk about our god-king Horus, though.
…
Do you follow this? Should I dumb it down a bit more? 

If you and I were in the middle ages, I would imagine you as a priest and me as a peasant and you would be mocking me for not being able to read the Bible while also refusing to teach me how to read.

Sex is physical, gender is social. Your insistence that they are the same substance is ridiculous

I am not interested in throwing insults back and forth, but I do want to note that you suggested I am too stupid to understand possible worlds theory in modal logic and then blatantly used the term ‘substance’ incorrectly. Neither gender nor sex are a substance…

Irregardless: why do you believe gender is “social”? How would you define each?

The latin genus referred to the classification of nouns — masculine, feminine, or neuter. So historically, neuter is one of the categories that “gender” originally encompassed.The original meaning of “gender” already included the notion of “neither male nor female”

Yeah, but that wasn’t applied to people (except in rare cases); and it was used to refer to something other than a person that couldn’t be meaningfully given a gender. ‘Neuter’ doesn’t refer to an actual third gender: it is a lack of gender.

So again, you are stipulating that there are two genders, determined by sex, and then pretending that this is a discovery, that it could not be otherwise.

Banno, I noted many times in this thread that I don’t mind if someone wants to make a virtual distinction between sex and gender: I am purposefully collapsing them to avoid confusion. Someone could make essentially the same view I am but conceptually separate gender and sex. The issue liberals have is that they try to make them really distinct as opposed to virtually distinct.

You are right: I am claiming that maleness and femaleness are a part of the real nature of men and woman; and this is different than the modern metaphysics smuggled into biology (although I wouldn't say either are incompatible with biology).

As Leontiskos said here, a male has the essence of maleness independently of how imperfectly he instantiates it in his existence. There is a metaphysical distinction between the form (act) and matter (potency) being made here that really helps clarify how gender and sex operate (irregardless if one believes they are conceptually distinct or not).

You didn't even try to answer the question, because you know I am right that the sex organs are not designed to be put in the anus (irregardless if you think men will tend to do it or tend to like to do it).

Yes. You are suggesting that if the negative consequences of doing the right thing are too great, then we shouldn't do it. If I could only save myself from extreme torture as opposed to simply getting murdered by murdering someone else, that wouldn't magically make me murdering someone permissible. What if me murdering this person saved the rest of humanity from endless suffering? Still not permissible.